Daily Mail
October 28, 2014
A violent mugger jailed for attacking pensioners with a knife has escaped from an open prison – becoming the second dangerous inmate to go on the run from the jail in less than six months.
A police search was under way last night for Sabul Miah who was sentenced to two life sentences in 2003 for a serious of stabbing attacks and violent robberies.
He has been missing for at least three days after failing to return to Standford Hill, a category-D prison in Sheerness, Kent. Miah was let out on day release on Thursday.
It is another embarrassment for prison chiefs after armed robber Michael Wheatley – known as the ‘Skull Cracker’ – absconded while on day release in May.
Wheatley, 55, was recaptured days later after robbing the Chelsea Building Society in Sunbury-on-Thames in Surrey at gunpoint. He had robbed the same building society 13 years earlier.
Last night, MP Philip Davies, who campaigns against open prisons, criticised the Ministry of Justice for placing dangerous criminals like Miah and Wheatley in one.
He said: ‘Dangerous criminals should not be placed in open prisons where they could easily escape.
‘You would have thought that the Ministry of Justice would have learned the lessons from the Wheatley experience. They should have tightened the system up straight away at Standford. I will raise this matter with the Secretary of State.’
Miah, 40, from Poplar, East London, was convicted of robbing at least 15 pensioners in what a judge described as ‘persistent and cruel crimes against the elderly’. His violence included slashing a war veteran’s throat and stabbing an 82-year-old woman’s hand.
He would target his victims after watching them withdraw their money from post offices in the Tower Hamlets area, follow them home and rob them at knifepoint outside their houses or in the lifts of their buildings. Miah had a crack and heroin habit.
At his trial, Judge Geoffrey Rivlin told Southwark Crown Court: ‘These were heart-rending offences committed against some of the most vulnerable people in the community without the least sign of mercy. The court will do everything to protect people against such terrible crime.’